When I was told that Sydney, Anne and Stewart’s four-year-old daughter, wanted to play a game, I got excited. I wondered which one she’d bring out to play. Would it be Twilight Struggle, a gripping strategy game based on the Cold War? Perhaps she would choose Space Hulk, in which armored soldiers desperately fend off an alien invasion of their spacecraft. Or maybe she was into old-school hex-and-counter wargames like Squad Leader. She may choose a classic abstract brain-burner like Go.

Now, I’ve never been much for dancing, as Becky can tell you. In situations in which dancing might be happening, I’ve always opted out, preferring to have people wonder why I’m not dancing instead of why I am. So I imagined this was the kiddo’s not-too-subtle jab at my presumed abilities. Well, I wasn’t going to stand for that, so I charged right into Angelina Ballerina’s Dancing Game (ABDG).

I’m going by the rules as told to me by the four-year-old, so they may not be completely accurate, but ABDG is a roll-and-move game in which you go around a board with colored spaces.

If you land on a straight-up colored space, nothing happens, unless there’s a rainbow bridge hooked to it, in which case you can cross the bridge. The whole point is to land on an Angelina Ballerina space, at which point you choose a card with some ballet move on it. You are then required to perform the move and add it to your dance card. The game continues until Sydney’s dance card is filled.

Once your dance card is filled, you get to perform the dance you created. Shown above is my filled card. And here’s the elegant performance it generated:

So as you can see, it’s not that I can’t dance. I simply usually choose not to.

ABDG is a fine game, but it’s no Tigris and Euphrates. I can’t imagine what Sydney sees in it.